A Handful of Dust
by Gater101
Summary: All Sherlock wants is to go home; home to John.


Title: A Handful of Dust  
Summary: All Sherlock wants is to go home; home to John.  
Characters: Sherlock, John, Irene, Mycroft  
Pairing: Sherlock/John  
Rating: PG-13  
Notes: I have writer's block on my other fic, so I decided to fight it with an old meme. Put your music player to random and write a ficlet for each song that comes on, writing only for the length of the song. It helps. Instead of a group of ten random fics, I ended up with a story in ten parts lol.

**Nothing Ever Happens – Del Amitri**

Mycroft shipped them off to Inverness. It was more than a little disturbing. Partly run by the church, not only were most shops shut on a Sunday they also closed doors at five-thirty (six at the latest) and the only places open were hotels filled with tourists decked out in faux-tartan and faux-folk pubs that served locally brewed beer for a small fortune.

It was awful. Sherlock was bored within an hour. He was suicidal within two. Murderous in five.

John bore it well, utilising the Sky+HD in their better-than-expected flat; golf, tennis, repeats of just about every American show that ever was on TV.

On their third month, Sherlock discovered what the natives of Inverness did to survive the tedium – the drugs.

**Lost – Katy Perry**

He got lost. It was the only way to describe it. The drugs took him hard and he disappeared for days and days, coming to on hard porcelain with John standing over him. Murderous. Disappointed. The disappointment was the worst. He was silent, and deferential, and _helpful_. That was the worst. John's disappointment...

Sherlock threw up again. His skull crunching against the rim of the toilet seat and he may or may not have been crying. He just wanted to go _home_; he wanted things to go back to normal. He wanted not to be stuck in shitty Inverness, with disappointed John and the never-ending _boredom_ and the bitter, bitter cold and the horrendous, lyrical accents. He sobbed and sobbed until his body ached with it.

Mycroft has him in a facility within four hours.

**Save Your Kisses For Me – Brotherhood of Man**

When Sherlock gets out of rehab some five weeks later (he hadn't co-operated, not really but he had a steadfast will not to disappoint John again (and Mycroft, always Mycroft pulling the strings)), The British Government doesn't send him to Düsseldorf, of course not because that would be a waste of resources. And if they did, John isn't invited.

Before he goes, he sits at the edge of the bed that John is currently unconscious on, whispers to him in the cool darkness of their better-than-expected flat in Inverness, brushes his lips over the lined forehead before pressing his temple there and lets John's breath hit his cheek for entirely too long.

He wants John to wait; he doesn't expect it.

John wakes in that half-awake sleep he has and Sherlock knows he won't remember in the morning. He lowers his lips to John's ear, whispers "I love you" and is gone.

**Get Some – Lykke Li**

He goes from Düsseldorf to Kuala Lumpur. He faces Moriarty twice, ends up with a stint in hospital recuperating from a stab-wound to the side and a broken wrist.

He kills his first person in the Kalahari under a sky speckled like a handful of bone dust thrown over a canvas of wet, indigo oil-paints. John would appreciate it. He takes a picture, sends it to Mycroft but the lens has faded most of the stars out and the effect is minimised. He sinks to his knees, a mile from the body and rolls onto his back.

With the sandy stretches around him, Sherlock has never felt so alone.

**Little By Little – Oasis**

He's getting closer – he can feel it. He'd never been one for instinct – yet he has found that it has served him well these past fourteen months. He's in Adelaide and his net is getting tighter and tighter, as is Moriarty's around Sherlock. He thrives on this, now. Needs it. Needs it almost as much as he needs the thought of John back in Inverness or London or wherever.

"Hello, sweetie," Sherlock looks up at the voice, sees Irene in the doorway. He doesn't smile. "Oh, don't be like that. I have information for you."

Irene had been a God-send, or whatever the synonym of that is for the atheists. Without her, he knows he would still be digging in the dirt in the Kalahari – he might even be rotting in the dirt of the Botswana desert – and he's grateful, for the most part.

But not today.

Today is a bad day. He misses John. If he was one inclined to believe in God (which he had been, once, when he'd been young) his faith would long since have left him, given what he's gone through. Given what he's done.

Irene doesn't press. She understands.

**The River – Bruce Springsteen**

The gun is familiar in his hand, now. It's sleek and silver and too refined. He wishes it was John's – the one he'd shot holes into the walls of 221b with, not the lithe, glimmering monstrosity Mycroft had sent him in a box with a bow for his birthday.

He had laughed, though. A sort of laugh, a small huff of breath but the closest he's been in twenty six months.

It's Christmas. He's on the banks of the Red River, Hanoi and Mycroft is beside him, resplendent and obvious in his three-piece suit. Sherlock is much more untidy. His hair is dyed, almost ginger and it's a mess of raggedy curls that loop and whorl around his ears and neck. It's become a comfort to him. He'll miss it, when it has to go.

"London misses you."

Sherlock looks down to his knees, drawn up to his chest and held in place by his clasped hands. He knows what Mycroft is saying; what they will never actually say to one another.

"I miss it, too."

By the time the sun rises, Mycroft (and any trace of him) is gone.

**Slip Into Something More Comfortable – Kinobe**

He's in Thailand, submitting to what Irene thinks is a hilarious stereotype. He considers is drag, she considers him a 'lady-boy'. His hair is long enough that he can wear the extensions well, but he's a little too thin in the face to pull off an entirely feminine look. Irene does what she can but as Sherlock reasons, he's working for a club exclusively for men who like lady-boys – it doesn't matter if he doesn't look like a woman. That's the _point_.

It's enough, apparently, because he's been hired by one of Moriarty's men, for Moriarty. Part of him wonders if Moriarty knows it's Sherlock he's ordered. He finds that he doesn't care. If he and Moriarty don't kill one another, living like this (without John) will do the job well enough for his counterpart.

He's struggling today. He's been struggling for many todays lately (more like everyday, but he hides it well, most of the time).

Irene slides the silk wrap-around dress over his shoulders, ties it the way it should be tied and fluffs up his hair a little with her fingers and some hairspray.

The heels are high and pointed and they hurt his feet and he's not exactly graceful but that doesn't matter because Moriarty makes him take them off (he's short, of course he has a complex).

He's naked (and dead) seven minutes and forty seconds later.

**Man on the Moon – REM**

Mycroft doesn't let him go home straight away. He goes so far as to have his agents intercept Sherlock at Dubai airport and confiscate his many passports and identities and they don't return his own.

One of the men hands him a bottle of sun block wrapped up with a blue bow on top and Sherlock snorts but the only sun he sees is through the windows of the terminal, where he sits and fumes and glares at the security cameras, knowing that Mycroft can see him.

The other passengers look at him like he's crazy and maybe he is. He's not sure anymore. He wonders if there's a chemical imbalance in his mind because instead of the crushing guilt and depression he'd felt after all of his other kills, he feels jittery and i_high/i_ after killing Moriarty. He feels _good._

"_He wasn't a very nice man."_

No, he wasn't. Neither was Moriarty. But John is good and Sherlock wonders if John can make Sherlock good – wants to believe that. But he knows that he'd be as well believing that they'd put a man on the moon in 1969, which Mycroft assures him did not happen. He's not sure why he's never deleted that information.

"Are you like Tom Hanks in that 'Terminal' movie?"

Sherlock stares blankly at the businessman who has tried to speak to him each time he's passed through the airport in the past two and a half weeks. The man shrugs and moves on, apparently nonplussed by Sherlock's quietness.

It reminds him of John.

He starts, looks closer because surely- but no.

Of course it's not John.

He wants to go home.

**Magic Love – Bent**

His flight (when he's finally allowed on one), he notes, is to Glasgow. Emirates first class and the flight path over the mountains around the border of Iraq remind Sherlock of John. Everything reminds Sherlock of John, really but that's not a surprise.

But Glasgow. _Glasgow_.

The last time Sherlock had been in Glasgow he had spent a weekend off his face in a club called the Arches where the cocaine was served over the bar along with alcohol. He vaguely remembers a paddling pool, a giant inflatable whale and the name 'Octopussy', but he's never been entirely sure if he hallucinated the events of that night or not.

He's never been to Glasgow since and swore that if he ever had to go back, he would avoid the Arches and their 'magic love'.

It's not really John's scene – it's not really Sherlock's scene, hasn't been for a long time.

He falls asleep somewhere over Europe. He dreams of John.

**Edge of Glory – Lady GaGa**

It takes a decade and a half (or what feels like it anyway) to pass through immigration, which is ridiculous because Sherlock's a subject of Her Majesty Great-Aunt-On-Mummy's-Side Elizabeth, damn it. But it's worth it because when he gets into the corridor leading to baggage there's a video feed of the arrivals lounge and he stands there for a long, long time just staring at John Watson.

John Watson who is waiting for him at Glasgow airport, looking impatient and terrified and...

And Sherlock runs. Jostled passengers shout obscenities at him in a language that he's not exactly sure is English and he's positive there's a few security guards eyeing him warily but he doesn't care he doesn't care because John _John John..._

The force of impact knocks John back a few steps and Sherlock may be crying and gasping and _grasping _but that's okay because John is, too and oh... _Oh. _Oh, he's home.

–


End file.
